Richie Branson: A bunch of friends and I were sitting around having a deep conversation about the whole Cosby scandal and the idea suddenly hit. While the entire Internet was making memes to inject commentary into the discussion, we decided to take it a step further and create a video game.

TUD: Did you intend for the game to be humorous?

RB: The intent was definitely to make the game as absurd and funny as possible, not to trivialize rape, but to use that humor as a motivation for people to continue to talk…

Our Black Friday special is a great way to get your blog ready for the new year. This weekend, every purchase of WordPress.com Premium will include a free year of unlimited access to all our premium themes — a $120 USD value — so you can use any theme at no extra cost.

The special sale starts just after midnight on Friday, November 28th, and ends just before midnight, on Monday, December 1st, for all time zones.

That’s right: this year, our offer will go live on Black Friday and remain in effect through Cyber Monday, and will be available on these dates across the globe, whether you’re in New Zealand or Hawaii.

A year of themes

140 premium themes and more added every week

To take advantage of this offer, just add the WordPress.com Premium plan to one of your blogs. Visit My Sites → Upgrades (you may need to select a site first) to…

In the latest in a string of policies which sound good and are incredibly cheap to implement, Theresa May will announce plans to put emotional abuse on a par with physical domestic violence. This sounds like nothing to object to, a long-awaited recognition of the seriousness of the coercive dynamics which so often sustain abusive relationships and hit survivors hard.

There is a catch, though, and it’s a catch which means I severely doubt that any perpetrators will find themselves prosecuted for something they have blatantly done: the whole thing hinges on telling the police.

The way the police tend to work is through talking about what happened. You list specific incidents. This happened, and then this happened, and then that happened. Imagine having to do this as a survivor of emotional abuse!

Things that happened so long ago were real.
The pain was real. The marks were real.
As I grew bigger, other bad things happened.
Unexpectable things.Unimaginable things.
Things that were all too real.

But the worst things seem to be the things that could be.
The sound of approachingsirens that could be heading to my house.
The boss who could be getting ready to fire me.
The smell that could be smoke.
The leading indicators that could be a sign.
The cough from my son’s room.
The phone ringing in the night.
The falling buildings.
The impending war.
The news around the clock.

Bad things happen.
But worse things could.
What does happen can be cleaned up or treated or paid for or even buried.
But what could happen must only be dealt with one way.
By refusing to fear what could be. By accepting that all that matters is…